Planewalker Games has offered the third update this month for The Broken Hourglass, the company's upcoming fantasy RPG. This time the update focuses on the mechanics of group skills: abilities which can benefit from more than one character in the party participating in a skill check.

Group skills reflect those activities where it is reasonable or expected that the ability and insight of each member of the party could be used in conjunction, to increase the overall chances of success. For instance, it seems only natural that a group of smart shoppers working in tandem should be able to negotiate better prices in a shop than a single negotiator. Similarly, one strong tactical mind in a group during a fight is a benefit--but two working in tandem should be able to do even better.

A party's overall group skill benefit is computed as follows: the best individual score in the skill is added to one-half of the second-best score. That value is added to one-third of the third-best score. And so on. This both reflects the diminishing returns of "too many cooks" for a group of savants, but ensures that comparatively more skilled parties still reap a bigger benefit than a bunch of novices.